Netflix's 'Squid Game' Soars In Weekend Streaming Share

Backing Netflix executives' projections that “Squid Game” would be its biggest global TV series ever, TV analytics company TVision says the South Korean dystopian drama pulled in a massive 11% of all streaming time spent by U.S. viewers for the most recent weekend.

Recently, Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said: “‘Squid Game’ will definitely be our biggest non-English-language show in the world.” The nine-episode series launched globally on Netflix, September 17.

“Squid Game” is a fictional series about a secret organization that lures contestants looking to escape hard-pressed financial situations by playing young children games for a chance to win almost $40 million. Losers can suffer horrific consequences.

Far behind in second place -- for the period of September 30 through October 3 -- were reruns of the HBO series “The Sopranos,” which ran on Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max -- getting a 2.1% share of streaming time spent. This past weekend, a “Sopranos” prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark” debuted in theaters and on HBO Max.

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After the “Sopranos,” Apple TV+ “Ted Lasso” was next at 1.9%. Netflix’s “Grey’s Anatomy” was at 1.5% and Netflix’s original series “Sex Education” saw a 1.4% share.

The numbers for “Squid Game” were the highest on Friday and Saturday (October 1 and 2), which took in 40% of streaming view time.

TVision gathers data from a panel of 5,000 U.S. homes, and 13,000 people, demographically representative.

It uses automatic content recognition (ACR) technology and “computer vision” technology to track second-by-second how viewers watch TV, with their eyes on the TV screen.

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